forestville
join:2003-12-10
Sunnyvale, CA
| This is good for Covad
Most people do not want the extra hassle of a Voip service. What you will see a lot of is a shift to VON which is what Bell Canada is doing, but it is still POTS to the home. POTS will be around for a long time and possibly forever. My grandparents still rented their phone from Bell up until they died, even though it was a waste of money. The convenience and old habits die hard.
Voip will eventually be taxed. We just aren't at the tipping point yet where the old taxes scheme has eroded enough. Tax revenues need to be collected, and Voip services have a home address associated with them. Once you add the taxes, Voip losses its cost advantage for most people.
A POTS card would permit an AT&T to move their phone services off of the baby bells equipment (which they have to pay for), onto a network which should be less expensive to run, and over which they could have a control of costs.
I realize that the DoNotCall lists have really put a damper on the acquisition of new telephone customers. Hence, the greatest likelihood is to move existing customers of a partner onto Covad's network away from the ILECs' networks. As well, consumer telco requires a fair amount of marketing muscle, which Covad does not and has never had. It was always difficult for Covad to compete with the millions of advertising inserts that were placed in the bills that were sent to every telco customer.
My thoughts are that at this point AT&T could use Covad POTS, and Covad would do well to enter AT&T's fold. Covad's future as an independent is more dicey. |
